Elon Musk Cartoons #17

Elon Musk is a great character for political cartoonists! We have lots of brilliant cartoons about Russia's evil president and we have four of the best political cartoonists in the world to discuss their Musk cartoons!

Musk makes big news with his often stupid or controversial Tweets, including one that earned him a fine of $420 million dollars from the SEC. Musk has been divorced three times and he has nine children. Elon's newest son's name is pronounced "ex ash A twelve" (X Æ A 12) --Musk is estimated to be the second richest man in the world, dropping from #1 as his Tesla shares dropped in value late last year. Musk's estimate current net worth is $174.5 billion.

We have FOUR great cartoonists today:

Dave Whamond has written and/or illustrated over 50 books, he does puzzles and cards greeting cards and all kinds of stuff. . He draws TWO two comics, His syndicated comic, "Reality Check", has appeared in newspapers since 1995 and he draws a new one called "Day by Dave" -- he's won a bunch of awards

Monte Wolverton, from Washington State draws wonderful, quirky, liberal cartoons that we syndicate everywhere. Monte is doing a crowd funding campaign now at Cagle.com/Wolverton, please take a look. It is tough to make a living in editorial cartoons with newspapers dying, so the support of fans can make all the difference in keeping artists like Monte drawing. You can make a difference. Visit Cagle.com/wolverton

Jeff Koterba has drawn for over thirty years for the top newspaper in Nebraska, his cartoons have flown around the world on the Space Shuttle Discovery, he’s consistently appearing among most popular cartoons, he hosts a show about classical music on radio station KVNO in Omaha, he plays in a popular Swing band, the Prairie Cats, and he’s been struck by lightening.

Bob Englehart was the editorial cartoonist for the Hartford Courant for 35 years when his job was eliminated by the hedge fund that bought the newspaper. Before that, he worked for Chicago Today, the Journal-Gazette in Ft. Wayne, IN and the Journal Herald in Dayton, OH. He studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago on scholarship. His progressive editorial cartoons have been distributed all over the world by CagleCartoons.com for nearly 20 years.

To see more, go to Caglecast.com and get a full transcript, cartoons from the podcast and more. Be sure to subscribe! We need subscribers!

Visit Cagle.com and Caglecast.com for much more.

Here are some great Elon cartoons that appeared in the podcast.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/16/elon-musk-tesla-ceo-full-self-driving/e8862d6c-f440-11ed-918d-012572d64930_story.html

https://theweek.com/twitter/1023628/can-linda-yaccarino-save-twitter

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2023/04/22/elon-musk-net-worth-tesla-austin-wealth-drops-12-billion-investors-raise-concerns-first-quarter/70139934007/

Here's the transcript:

[00:00:00] Daryl Cagle: Hi, I'm Daryl Cagle, and this is the Caglecast. We're all about political cartoons. Today we're discussing cartoons about eccentric billionaire Elon Musk, who bought Twitter and seems to be running it into the ground. Elon owns Tesla and SpaceX. He has a huge presence in the solar energy business through his company, solar City.

[00:00:21] Daryl Cagle: He made a fortune creating PayPal. He makes big news with his often stupid or controversial tweets, including one that earned him a fine of millions of dollars from the securities and Exchange commission. Musk has been divorced three times. He has nine children. His newest son's name is pronounced x a 12.

[00:00:43] Daryl Cagle: Musk is estimated to be the second richest man in the world dropping from number one late last year as value of his Tesla shares dropped. And we have four great cartoonists today to discuss. Elon Musk gentlemen, Dave Whamond has written or illustrated over 50 books. In fact, he's finishing one just today.

[00:01:03] Daryl Cagle: He draws two comics. Reality Check, which has been a newspaper since 1995, and a new one called Day by Dave, and he's won a whole bunch of awards. Monte Wolverton from Washington State draws wonderful, quirky liberal cartoons that we syndicate everywhere. Monte is doing a crowdfunding now at Cagle.com/wolverton.

[00:01:23] Daryl Cagle: I hope you'll take a look cuz it's tough to make a living in editorial cartoons with newspapers dying so the supportive fans can make all the difference in keeping artists like Monte Drawing. You can make a difference. Jeff Koterba has drawn for over 30 years for the top newspaper in Nebraska. His cartoons have flown around the world on the space shuttle discovery.

[00:01:43] Daryl Cagle: He's consistently appearing among our most popular cartoonists, as does Dave Woman. And he hosts a show on classical music on radio station KV and O in Omaha, and he plays in a swing band called The Prairie Cats, and he's been struck by Lightning and he has also got a crowdfunding campaign with us at cagle.com/koterba.

[00:02:05] Daryl Cagle: I hope you'll consider contributing to Jeff and keep Jeff drawing as newspapers fade away. Bob Englehart was the editorial cartoonist for The Hartford Current for 35 years when his job was eliminated by the hedge fund that bought the newspaper. Before that he worked for Chicago. Today, the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the Journal Herald in Dayton, Ohio, his progressive editorial cartoons have been distributed all over the world by Kegel cartoons for dearly 20 years.

[00:02:34] Daryl Cagle: Welcome gentlemen. Thank you. Glad to be here. Great to be here. Well, let's get started on all of this. Here's our first cartoon. This one's by Pat Bagley, Elon Musk, peeing in the Twitter pool. I thought this was very funny, very clever. Is that all you guys have to say? No, I very

[00:02:50] Jeff Koterba: clever. It's great. I mean, there've been so many cartoons that have been drawn with a little Twitter bird, and that's as a cartoonist, you're always looking for that iconic symbol that we can all relate to.

[00:03:00] Jeff Koterba: That doesn't take a any explanation. You see the Twitter bird? You know what it's about, but I have not seen anything like this. It was very, very unique. Really. No, that's,

[00:03:10] Daryl Cagle: that's a, that's a new one. Okay. Jeff, here's one of yours. Laughing Musk. Get his space suit with the bird pecking to get in and lots of money.

[00:03:20] Jeff Koterba: This is, uh, when there was the question of whether Elon Musk was actually gonna go ahead and take over. Take over, uh, Twitter or not. So, um, yeah, just another one of these cartoons where we're seeing the Twitter bird. I, I just wanna let you know that even though you can't see it, Elon Musk is peeing in a space suit as, uh, you just can't see it. It's off the page.

[00:03:40] Daryl Cagle: That's very good to know.

[00:03:41] Monte Wolverton: It's a very good musk, a very good rendition.

[00:03:45] Daryl Cagle: Oh, thank you Dave. I thought this cartoon was just wonderful and it comes from the children's book author. Yeah. Can you tell where your heart is? I think so. You've got the children's book and the kid with the blue check on his shirt and the children's book reads.

[00:03:59] Daryl Cagle: He was no longer verified, but he didn't feel small. You see, he didn't need that Twitter blue check mark at all. Elon making him pay for one was really just plain wrong. Besides that blue check mark had been inside him all along. Brilliant. Hey,

[00:04:16] Jeff Koterba: Brilliant. Thank you.

[00:04:17] Daryl Cagle: It's very funny. This made me laugh.

[00:04:19] Daryl Cagle: Thanks. Thanks.

[00:04:20] Dave Whamond: Yeah. Just, uh, the day the, the, the fiasco of him taking away people's check marks and some were saying, I've got it back. You know, like, what's going on? I didn't pay for it. And, and others were commenting. You know, celebrities saying, I'm still me, I'm still here. You know, and it that just sort of being a children's book author that's popped into my head right away where, you know, hey, it was always inside of me, you know?

[00:04:43] Daryl Cagle: So I thought, hey, that that could actually work. That's very funny. Monte, here's one of yours, Elon squeezing the Twitter bird who, uh, does not feel too happy about being squeezed.

[00:04:55] Monte Wolverton: Well, that's kind of the essential thing that's happening, isn't it?

[00:04:58] Daryl Cagle: I guess it is. Yeah. That poor bird suffers in cartoons about, like the dove of peace suffers.

[00:05:03] Daryl Cagle: I feel very bad about

[00:05:04] Monte Wolverton: that bird. No bird

[00:05:05] Jeff Koterba: could have had some bird droppings on Elon Musk, uh, from, you know, being squeezed like that. I could have added that.

[00:05:11] Daryl Cagle: But we certainly have cartoons with bird droppings on Elon Musk. I've seen a few. Here's one of mine.

[00:05:16] Monte Wolverton: Oh, that's better. Yeah.

[00:05:18] Jeff Koterba: God, it's great. Daryl.

[00:05:21] Daryl Cagle: Oh, well thank you. I've got, uh, I've got Mama Elon Musk bird throwing up into the mouth of the Twitter bird because that's what birds do. Bob. Yeah. Here he's got bird brain cartoon with Elon and he's got unrestricted speech on his mind. Oh, yeah.

[00:05:38] Bob Englehart: I, you know, it's fascinating to me what people will do. When they get enough money that they can do anything.

[00:05:43] Bob Englehart: They wanna do anything in the world. And I think of, uh, Michael Jackson, uh, and the ranch that he had, Neverland Ranch and buying a monkey. And I mean, what do people do when they could do anything on earth? Look at this guy. He buys companies,

[00:06:00] Daryl Cagle: he, he, he says things he shouldn't be saying.

[00:06:03] Monte Wolverton: This is the state to which we all aspire.

[00:06:05] Daryl Cagle: So Bob, I think you're saying with this Twitter bird bones that Twitter is soon to be extinct.

[00:06:11] Bob Englehart: Well, yeah. I, I was soon to be extinct on Twitter. I was gonna quit Twitter, but, Colleague, uh, talked me out of it. And you, Bob,

[00:06:19] Jeff Koterba: you still find it useful to be on Twitter in, in spite of Musk?

[00:06:23] Bob Englehart: I don't take it personally, but I was, I was gonna leave Twitter because I couldn't find out anything that it ever did for me.

[00:06:31] Jeff Koterba: are, are you, are you finding it useful now? Do you, you still use it, you said?

[00:06:35] Bob Englehart: I put my cartoons on. That's all I do. I don't comment. I don't watch sports and comment on every play. You know what I mean? Or political speeches and comments. I mean, I just, I'm not there to comment, but people who are really on Twitter, they don't have any privacy.

[00:06:49] Bob Englehart: They're on there all the time. Mm-hmm. Share every thought, every emotion. If I shared every emotion, the police would come knocking on my door. Okay.

[00:06:57] Daryl Cagle: Jeff. Tell us about this one. You've got two aliens talking to each other. They're on the moon. One alien says Very nachos, Elon Musk to bring humans to the moon.

[00:07:07] Daryl Cagle: But then Jeff Bezos protested. All I want to know is who's delivered my Amazon package.

[00:07:13] Jeff Koterba: You know, great alien voice, Daryl. You know, I, you know, at the end of the day, people can be upset at, they'll be upset at Musk or they'll be at upset with Jeff Bezos for whatever reason. But really, they still want to use Twitter.

[00:07:26] Jeff Koterba: Some of them do. Or they, they just want to know if they're gonna get their Amazon package delivered. Mm-hmm. Let's talk about Amazon Prime, which has kind of quietly become worse and not dependable, but you know, we all lament, or I do lament. Oh, the La Lament. Oh, the bookstore shop. The book, the bookstores that are closing.

[00:07:45] Jeff Koterba: But I still order sometimes from Amazon. We all, you know, we want the convenience, but we wanna be able to, uh, criticize these rich guys too and have the, you know, the best of both worlds, I guess. Yeah.

[00:07:56] Monte Wolverton: Mm-hmm. I use Amazon politics, being local, I guess. I use

[00:08:01] Daryl Cagle: Amazon a lot, Jeff. I think this one is probably the most.

[00:08:04] Daryl Cagle: Close to the most popular cartoon you've drawn, uh, was one of the most popular ones of the year. You've got aliens in the Space station. They're looking up at three shooting stars. One says, looks like we have company. Another one says, U F O? He says, no, just Bezos, Musk and Branson showing off as they shoot through the sky.

[00:08:24] Daryl Cagle: Boy, the editors liked this one.

[00:08:26] Jeff Koterba: Well, I mean,  I, I just feel like I'm a big fan of the space program. As you mentioned. I've had a cartoon on the space shuttle, but I've followed, as I assuming, you know, most of us have. And it's ramping up again, of course, in part, thanks to these rich guys. Mm-hmm. And also NASA going back to the moon.

[00:08:40] Jeff Koterba: It's very exciting, but, you know, it, it's sort of, uh, uh, for me it be begs a deeper question like what does it mean to be an astronaut? You know, it used to be you would have to go through NASA, but now you can just buy your way onto, you know, maybe onto the moon eventually or Mars, and it's just gonna kind of change the dynamic of what it means to be an astronaut.

[00:09:01] Jeff Koterba: I'm not saying that's bad, but it just interesting conversation moving forward.

[00:09:06] Monte Wolverton: Do kids look

[00:09:07] Bob Englehart: up to astronauts today like they did? Back in the day when the space exploration was new?

[00:09:13] Jeff Koterba: Bob, that's a great question. I have a friend who's, uh, an astronaut, uh uh, he's back in Nebraska now, and, uh, I'm gonna ask him that, that is a great question.

[00:09:21] Jeff Koterba: I do know that he gives a lot of talks, uh, to schools and they do turn out to hear him talk. Yeah. Uh, so I, I,

[00:09:30] Daryl Cagle: I think so. I hope so, Jeff. So here you've got Santa and, uh, the elves and the kids looking at a Santa candy cane check mark. And the elf says the big guy is holding off a check verification for now.

[00:09:43] Daryl Cagle: Too many naughty kids pretending to be nice. This is cute.

[00:09:47] Jeff Koterba: That's good. Nice. I like yours better, Dave. But I, maybe I should have turned the elves into a space. Aliens. It just makes everything.

[00:09:57] Daryl Cagle: So here's one by Rivers, the cat who ate the canary and, uh, Elon Musk, the cat eating the Twitter bird. We probably had a dozen cartoons with, uh, Elon Musk, as the Cat.

[00:10:07] Daryl Cagle: But I like 'em all. I editors seem to like them all, doesn't it? It doesn't matter that people draw the same thing. That's something that cartoonists worry about more than editors. All right? Uh, Rivers is, uh, kind of, uh, crazy conservative. He draws the radical left as, uh, vulture descending on Elon. Who's taking a innocent little picture of the Twitter birdie in the nest and he says, "Awh, you're a cute little birdie.  Where's your mommy? So, uh, what do you think of this? We did, I did not invite a conservative cartoonist to this, uh, get together.

[00:10:42] Jeff Koterba: His drawings are always beautiful. I mean, not they're, but his drawings are nice, you know, in that Jeff and alleyway all, with all due respect to rivers, but very beautifully drawn.

[00:10:51] Daryl Cagle: Yeah. Nice. No comment on the substance. No, no.

[00:10:54] Jeff Koterba: We can all, we can agree to disagree. I mean, Well, I don't know.

[00:10:57] Daryl Cagle: Here's another Rivers with, uh, Elon as Moses. And, uh, it says, and so Musk came down to the liberal Twitter mob and you've got the mob labeled hate speech. And Musk says, "Also, get rid of that idol. Everyone knows you use it to ban everyone who doesn't agree with your cult." And, uh, guy, the hate speech crowd says, "I doth hateth this guy already."

[00:11:24] Bob Englehart: I don't have to watch Fox News Channel because I just look at Rivers cartoons and I know what Fox News Channel is talking about. Yeah. There we go. So he's saving me a lot of time and time is precious.

[00:11:34] Monte Wolverton: It's enough for me.

[00:11:34] Jeff Koterba: One of the, one of the things that has absolutely been so frustrating to me on the whole Twitter conversation is that it is not censorship and people have thrown around the word censorship. Mm-hmm. And it's, it's not accurate. No, it's a, it's a private business and government. It's not government censorship.

[00:11:50] Jeff Koterba: And these people who just say that, yeah, Trump was censor. Well, no, no. Mm. The same way if I own a bar and a guy comes in and he's disturbing my customers, I have every right to throw that guy out of my bar. It's my establishment. Yep.

[00:12:04] Daryl Cagle: Well, you know, the First Amendment protects us against government censorship, but there is private censorship.

[00:12:10] Daryl Cagle: Um, you know, but that's, people that run Twitter are not, My editors and when they kill one of my cartoons, that's censorship. Even though they have every right to do it. Mm-hmm.

[00:12:22] Dave Whamond: I don't see. Yeah. And I think

[00:12:23] Bob Englehart: Elon's, I see it. I see it as editing. There's a difference between editing and censoring. Government sensors.

[00:12:29] Daryl Cagle: Yeah. But an editor is someone you work with who's hiring you to do something. You know, when I'm posting on, uh, whatever I want on the web, and some gatekeeper comes and says, you can't post that. That's not my editor. That's some gatekeeper imposing his will on me.

[00:12:47] Bob Englehart: Yeah. But that's what gatekeepers do, right?

[00:12:50] Bob Englehart: Bob? I deal with gatekeepers for 35 years at the Hartford Courant.

[00:12:55] Jeff Koterba: Bob, your, to your point, Bob. You know, people would say that too. They said, you know, when I was at the newspaper, did, were you ever censored? No, I was edited. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:13:06] Daryl Cagle: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So when Facebook kills one of your cartoons is, are they editing you?

[00:13:12] Bob Englehart: Yeah, it's their company. Mm-hmm.

[00:13:14] Dave Whamond: And I know Clay Jones, uh, at the cartoonist Clay Jones. He's had some of his, uh, taken off Facebook

[00:13:20] Daryl Cagle: Oh, I've had a bunch taken off. Yeah. They said for violating community standards. Yeah, yeah. Um, mm-hmm. And I don't think a human even looks at them. I think, uh, somebody complains who disagrees with your cartoon and it gets taken down.

[00:13:33] Daryl Cagle: Mm-hmm. I've got like five Facebook pages and whenever I get a cartoon uh, killed on Facebook. It's only on one and it stays up on the other four. There's no consistency to it. Mm-hmm. Think anybody looks,

[00:13:45] Monte Wolverton: the last one I had taken down, uh, was taken down for reasons that were contrary to the cartoon. It was like a machine had looked at it and didn't understand the satire.

[00:13:56] Monte Wolverton: Yeah. Yeah. AI thing. Ai. So I didn't, I didn't feel it. I just, I just,

[00:14:01] Bob Englehart: uh, or AS, artificial stupidity.

[00:14:08] Daryl Cagle: All right, Dave, here's one of yours. You've got, uh, guy riding on the Twitter "Log In" rollercoaster. He's, uh, dropping into a vati goo, and he says, I'm worried that if Elon Musk is allowed to buy Twitter, things could go downhill. It's almost like you were right.

aDve Whamond: It's almost like I can predict the future. It is, yeah.

[00:14:29] Daryl Cagle: It's amazing. I love, I love that roll. Here's another one of yours, Dave. Thanks. You've got Elon Musk holding his sink. You know, he walked into Twitter on his first day holding a sync saying, let this sink in. He says, "I'm the new owner of Twitter. Let that sink in." And then he's sunk underwater. Yes, you are prescient.

[00:14:49] Daryl Cagle:

[00:14:51] Dave Whamond: I'm, I'm Kreskin. I don't know. That's too old a reference, isn't it? Does anyone kreskin? I remember

[00:14:54] Monte Wolverton: it. Yes,

[00:14:56] Daryl Cagle: I do. Yeah. Yeah. Here's another one of yours with a very nice Elon, and he's a robot. He blah, blah, blah, and the scientists are looking at him saying, How did we not notice that until Dow? It could be that simple. And he looks at the on off switch.

[00:15:09] Daryl Cagle: Yeah, that play

[00:15:12] Dave Whamond: on word just kind of came to me and fit in with the whole robotic personality and, and I think at that point everyone had had enough of Elon, so I thought it just all kind of came together in one here.

[00:15:22] Daryl Cagle: So Monte, so you've got an empty conference table that says Twitter Content Moderation Council.

[00:15:29] Monte Wolverton: Oh, I'd forgotten about that. It was easy to draw and there were no caricatures in it, and there were just a lot of chairs that was, uh, you know, there it is. Empty moderation.

[00:15:38] Jeff Koterba: These are really nice chairs. Monte. Yeah,

[00:15:40] Dave Whamond: I was gonna say, easy to draw like a table's like, uh, drawing a horse. You know, I, I avoid 'em and if I can zoom in and cut off the legs, then I'm, uh, find any way to cheat.

[00:15:50] Bob Englehart: I hate drawing bicycles. I will avoid drawing a bicycle as long as I can.

[00:15:55] Monte Wolverton: If you look closely, you'll see that the one chair on the left is the mirror image of the other chair on the right. Exactly. And so, yeah, I cut, cut a few corners there, but ...

[00:16:04] Dave Whamond: if I, if I get a request to draw a horse on a bike, I'm out of there ...

[00:16:09] Daryl Cagle: Here's an Adam Zyglis cartoon. He's got, uh, Twitter megaphone spewing out garbage ;Musk's idea of absolute free speech. There are a lot of muck cartoons associated with Elon Musk. Here he is letting the sink in. And there's, uh, sink in. The sink is connected to the sewer and spewing muck. Here's, uh, Twitter, Trojan horse, uh, with all of these characters climbing out of it.

[00:16:34] Daryl Cagle: Twitter is a lot of chaos with a lot of crazy characters. This is a Thanksgiving cartoon with, uh, Musk as the Turkey on the frozen food aisle. I don't know.

[00:16:46] Jeff Koterba: I dunno if, uh, Zyglis, uh, intended it, but it looked like the turkeys in the left hand side where he had the yellow plastic candle. Almost like they're sticking tongues out at Elon.

[00:16:55] Daryl Cagle: Yeah. Here's Elon, the wicked witch of the West, sending out his Twitter flying monkeys. Fly my Pretties. That's funny. You know, if you don't comment on cartoons, I'm probably gonna edit them out. The poor cartoonist won't get his cartoon seen. Every kid gets a trophy and, uh, Elon Musk is handing out the checks to everyone for only $7.99 a month.

[00:17:17] Daryl Cagle: You can have one too.

[00:17:18] Monte Wolverton: Mm-hmm. Is that what it I, I got, I got one. Did you? Yeah. And I feel better than everyone. Now.

[00:17:25] Daryl Cagle: Do you get, did the check display on your page?

[00:17:29] Monte Wolverton: It took it a while because they were going through this other thing of, you know, I guess that's, they were busy with that or something, but it took, I don't know, it took like almost a week.

[00:17:39] Monte Wolverton: Either that or it was there and I didn't notice it. But the only reason I got it ,well was so that I could put longer videos on there. Mm-hmm. Okay. And I, and I think your, I think your posts have a larger reach or something like that.

[00:17:52] Daryl Cagle: Yes. I, it's interesting to me on, on Twitter, I've got like, 70,000 followers on Twitter, and when I put up a post, it goes to about 300 people.

[00:18:04] Daryl Cagle: They just, uh, throttled them back so that your number of followers doesn't make much difference in,

[00:18:10] Monte Wolverton: well, did you get a blue check and then, and then, uh, gauge?

[00:18:13] Daryl Cagle: I, I don't have a, a blue check. I should do that and see if there's anything ...

[00:18:16] Monte Wolverton: We're the one that suggested that I get a blue check.

[00:18:18] Daryl Cagle: Well, I'm sorry.

[00:18:21] Daryl Cagle: That's okay. Has it been working? Are you getting lots more people to use it? Are more people seeing your posts?

[00:18:27] Monte Wolverton: It seems like there's a few more, but it's hard to, hard to tell because that varies from cartoon to cartoon.

[00:18:33] Daryl Cagle: Yeah. They really want you to pay to get your own followers to see your posts.

[00:18:36] Daryl Cagle: Yes, I'm, I'm paying

[00:18:37] Monte Wolverton: Elon. That's, yeah. Elon is a big thing about it.

[00:18:41] Dave Whamond: Elon is definitely trying to generate income cuz there's rumors today that you're gonna have to pay for, to read an article. Every article you're gonna have to pay to read on there. I saw that. And provide banking information. I don't know if that's true or not though.

[00:18:54] Monte Wolverton: And then we, I don't think there's a cartoon here about it, but we saw his thing that he did. Was it yesterday? I think the article I read that was dated yesterday, his, his his paid family leave, which was 20 weeks for the organization, was cut down to two weeks. Two weeks, paid family leave. Geez. Which means he doesn't want women working for his organization, or he doesn't want women who reproduce.

[00:19:17] Monte Wolverton: He wants, you know, cheap young people. And I don't know. By the way, Monte,

[00:19:22] Jeff Koterba: I think you should put your, your blue check mark on your signature, uh, on your cartoons. There you go.

[00:19:28] Monte Wolverton: You know, problem solved. I think you might have something there.

[00:19:31] Daryl Cagle: Problem solved. All right, here's another Bagley cartoon with Musk the Robot, which seems to also be a popular metaphor.

[00:19:37] Daryl Cagle: And Musk says, "Get back to work, meat organisms:.

[00:19:42] Jeff Koterba: What a great name for a band.

[00:19:43] Daryl Cagle: Meat Organisms.

[00:19:45] Jeff Koterba: Love it.

[00:19:46] Daryl Cagle: Yes, I like it. And another musk cat cartoon by Bagley, which is a very nice one. It's standing in the shadow of Trump and uh Oh, I love guys. No, that's great. Musk has killed the Twitter bird with a tap of his finger.

[00:19:59] Daryl Cagle: It's a sad one. Apologies to Frank Kelly Freas; was this, uh,

[00:20:04] Dave Whamond: There was a Queen album cover back in the, what? Early eighties, I guess. Oh, yeah. He was

[00:20:11] Dave Whamond: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he must have, I just know it by the like, I remember being a kid and seeing the album cover and like, well, I'm buying this just from the

[00:20:18] Daryl Cagle: cover, so I'm a big Kelly Freas fan.

[00:20:21] Daryl Cagle: He used to come to NCS meetings in Los Angeles. Just a lovely guy.

[00:20:25] Dave Whamond: Yeah. I think even if you don't know the musical reference on that one, it's still still works. Mm-hmm.

[00:20:29] Daryl Cagle: Oh yeah. So here's Elon Musk looking like Apocalypse Now, and he says,"I had to destroy the village to save it." Yeah, excellent. Almost looks like Ted Cruz there a bit too.

[00:20:41] Daryl Cagle: So, alright. All

[00:20:41] Dave Whamond: you guys

[00:20:42] Bob Englehart: using, uh, electronic, uh, drawing on a Cintiq or some such thing like that?

[00:20:49] Monte Wolverton: I am using a Cintiq. Mm-hmm.

[00:20:51] Dave Whamond: There you are. Okay. I do the original drawing on paper and then scan it and color it in on, a Cintiq. So, yeah. Okay. How about you, Bob?

[00:21:00] Bob Englehart: Well, I draw the, uh, cartoon on paper and then put it in Photoshop.

[00:21:03] Bob Englehart: I'm using Photoshop. I'm using the Photoshop that was developed in 1990.

[00:21:08] Daryl Cagle: So here's another Bagley Elon throwing a burning Twitter bird onto his pile of 44 billion. That doesn't look like a very good investment in retrospect. No.

[00:21:21] Dave Whamond: Yeah, I don't know if, if he tried to screw it up. I don't know if there's a method to his madness, but, uh, I think my dog could have done a better job running Twitter, so

[00:21:28] Daryl Cagle: it just seemed kind of random.

[00:21:31] Daryl Cagle: Here's Musk the Fox in the Twitter henhouse. "I'm just here for free speech" as the Twitter birds fly away. This one is by our new cartoonist, Frank Hansen. And Musk says. "We need everyone, everyone, to pause their work on AI --Psst need a launch update on X.A.I. and Truth GPT on my desk in 30 minutes."

[00:21:53] Dave Whamond: I really love his, uh, loose style.

[00:21:54] Dave Whamond: I've seen his work for a while, so I'm glad you

[00:21:56] Daryl Cagle: you picked him up. Daryl, he's doing pretty well and he's excited to be in the package, so, uh, good. I'm very happy with him. Here's another Musk cat eating the Twitter bird. We certainly got a lot of these. I should have grouped them together. Musk letting the Twitter bird free.

[00:22:12] Daryl Cagle: This one's by Gary McCoy. And of-course the, the conservative view is that Twitter was dominated by liberals and then conservative Musk allows the Twitter bird to be free of the. Liberal cage.

[00:22:25] Monte Wolverton: Oh, this is certainly a different perspective.

[00:22:28] Bob Englehart: I always say that when I see a conservative cartoon or a conservative commentator, sometimes I think, oh, wow.

[00:22:35] Bob Englehart: I, I, it's amazing how you could take that away from the situation, but you did. You saw, you know, two people can look the same event and walk away with two completely different takes on it. That's always fascinated

[00:22:48] Monte Wolverton: me. Well, it doesn't seem to make much sense, but still

[00:22:51] Bob Englehart: no, it doesn't seem, seem to make sense. It's conservative

[00:22:54] Daryl Cagle: here. Here you've got the Qanon Shaman writing on the Twitter bird that says Property of Elon Musk. He says, "Yee-Haw," this is a Rick McKee cartoon. I guess maybe there's some truth to that. Did he free up all of the crazy conservatives to be more crazy on Twitter? Maybe,

[00:23:11] Dave Whamond: well, he let a bunch of like Nazi accounts back on, which was, uh, he banned a account that showed funny cat videos for some reason, for, um, for a week or so.  But the Nazi guys can still have, uh, free reign, knock yourselves up.

[00:23:24] Daryl Cagle: You know, we have this podcast is called Caglecast and Caglecast.com, and there's another podcast called Caglecats. C A T S and it's all about kitties. Uh, no relation. One letter difference. That's funny. Just so you know, when you misspell it, you get cats.

[00:23:47] Daryl Cagle:

[00:23:48] Jeff Koterba: And ironically, if it's  Caglecats, they're probably showing cartoons about Elon Musk as a cat too, so

[00:23:53] Daryl Cagle: They must, all right. Uh, here you've got Elon with Twitter on his mind from Kevin Siers. Nice. This, this is a lovely, uh, Taylor Jones cartoon with, uh, Elon and his girlfriend of last year, Grimes and uh, Grimes is pretty funny.

[00:24:12] Daryl Cagle: And there you see his little son, X Æ A 12.

[00:24:17] Dave Whamond: That must be tough when you're yelling at your kid to come in. Hey, heck, I need, uh, Æ 12. Get in here.

[00:24:22] Bob Englehart:  Poor, poor kid's gonna be spelling his name for the rest of his life. What's your name? Uh, yeah, I don't know.

[00:24:31] Dave Whamond: Call me Mike. Kind of reminds me of Frank Zappa with Dweezel and Moon Unit and whatever.

Daryl Cagle: Yeah. But we knew how to pronounce "Dweezil."

[00:24:38] Monte Wolverton: Yeah. You can pronounce Dweezil Eezel-y.

[00:24:41] Daryl Cagle: Here you've got Dick Wright, another conservative cartoon with, uh, heroic executioner, Elon Musk, executing the presumably liberal who used to be on Twitter.

[00:24:54] Bob Englehart: I've known Dick since, uh, he was with the Rhode Island newspaper that's going back 40 years, I think 35 years, something like that.

[00:25:02] Jeff Koterba: Man, I love those shoes. He draws. His drawings are just beautiful. Love the bottom of those shoes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They are. Those are good. Seriously fine shoes. Kind of Drucker-ish or Oliphant-ish. Mm-hmm.

[00:25:15] Dave Whamond: Jack Davis. Jack Davis

[00:25:16] Jeff Koterba: too. Yeah. Jack. Jack Davis. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I like the restraint.

[00:25:21] Monte Wolverton: I like the restraint. He didn't show the head rolling away

[00:25:24] Daryl Cagle: Thank goodness. So, gentlemen, that was our last cartoon. Uh, you have any more thoughts on Elon Musk?

[00:25:31] Bob Englehart: Well, I'm jealous of Elon Musk. He's got more money than I do. He could do whatever he wants. I'm jealous.

[00:25:36] Dave Whamond: I, I think he's a fascinating character. Like he's kind of a cartoonist dream. He's, he would be implausible in a, an awesome Powers movie.

[00:25:45] Dave Whamond: He's like Dr. Evil kind of, you know, I still have a, gave my mind up about him.

[00:25:49] Jeff Koterba: So it's, it's, it's sort of like what we were talking about earlier, like Bezos and, uh, you know, with Amazon or whatever, we can criticize him. And I certainly have, and he does seem like he's really wacky and crazy. But maybe he is a, a, a wacky, crazy genius too.

[00:26:06] Jeff Koterba: I mean, and what he is doing, you know, for the space program, it's pretty compelling stuff. Mm-hmm. So he's complex and I don't know, I feel like in our world we're filled with, there are so many complex characters and. You know, there, you know, with cancel culture and everything else, but it's like, how do you finesse the crazy and you know, that balance of crazy and genius.

[00:26:27] Daryl Cagle: It is. It is interesting that in the cartoons, Twitter just predominates, uh, and Twitter is arguably not, uh, the biggest or most important things that Elon Musk does. Mm-hmm.

[00:26:39] Dave Whamond: I think he was a darling of the, of the left and well almost everyone when he was. Yep. You know, he had the electric car and the rockets into space like he could have been.

[00:26:50] Dave Whamond: So well thought of, and that kind of fell apart when he got into the Twitter thing. So it just, uh, it kind of went south on him. And I don't know if he, he

[00:26:59] Jeff Koterba: did crazy when he launched a Tesla into space as well. True. That was a bit

[00:27:05] Bob Englehart: Okay. Maybe, maybe I'm not jealous of it. I think part of his maybe of, maybe he's just nuts.

[00:27:10] Monte Wolverton: Part of his general business plan.

[00:27:14] Monte Wolverton: I think he's a little, a little bit Trumpish. In that he thrives and, and uses publicity and, uh, mm-hmm. Perhaps part of his strategy in acquiring Twitter was that the amount of publicity that it would give him, mm-hmm. He doesn't really care if it's negative publicity or positive publicity, as long as it's publicity.

[00:27:35] Monte Wolverton: Which is not ...

[00:27:35] Daryl Cagle: Well, he acknowledges that he stumbled into buying Twitter. He didn't have much choice because the court was gonna force him to go through mm-hmm. With the things that he said. But after Twitter stock dropped, after he made a, an offer and the offer was no longer a very reasonable offer to make.

[00:27:51] Daryl Cagle: So, uh, I kind of, you know, he acknowledges that and that was the news reports at the time. I kind of believe it. It seems like a lot of the stuff he does kind of happens randomly. Yeah.

[00:28:02] Jeff Koterba: That's why I drew the cartoon with him, with the money as the astronaut. I remember what ex was just what you said, Daryl.

[00:28:08] Jeff Koterba: He made the offer and then he kind of backed off and the Twitter stuck.

[00:28:12] Dave Whamond: Thanks for, but, but I noticed he, he, um, the algorithms, he will always have his. Tweets pop up first in your feed, even if you don't follow him. Yeah. So, you know, and then he can host infantile jokes too. So I think he bought it for that

[00:28:27] Bob Englehart: Long live Elon Musk he's a, a never ending source of cartoons. Mm-hmm.

Monte Wolverton: I wish him well.

[00:28:33] Dave Whamond: well. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see where he goes with this. With all, with all

[00:28:38] Daryl Cagle: of this. So, Thank you for, uh, joining me today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. A pleasure. Ah, everyone, thank you for being with us today.

[00:28:49] Daryl Cagle: Everyone, please remember to subscribe to the Caglecast. Subscribe to the Caglecast, and if you were listening today and not seeing the cartoons, uh, know that our cast is available in both video and audio. Formats. Uh, if you wanna see the cartoons, you can go to Cagle.com or Apple Podcast. Or YouTube or Spotify or Caglecast.com, and you can see the cartoons in the video podcast.

[00:29:12] Daryl Cagle: But, uh, hey, since we describe them, that audio podcast is still pretty good. And thank you, gentlemen for being here today, and, uh, we'll see you next time.

[00:55:12] Everyone: You're welcome. All right. Peace out. My pleasure. Okay, thanks a lot.